


you and me, we're poetry

by notcaycepollard



Series: missing you [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy Johnson is the only Marvel Superhero, F/M, I am powerless to resist people asking nicely for follow-ups involving kissing, Phil Coulson: has a million feelings, future fic: Inhuman registration, here is a follow-up involving kissing, mention of Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 15:14:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Coulson's life, he thinks. This is the rhythm of his life with Skye, with Daisy. He had her, and then he lost her, and lost her, and lost her, more times than he's able to count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and me, we're poetry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortitude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/gifts), [zauberer_sirin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/gifts), [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).



> a follow-up to 'i only miss you when the sun goes down (oh, your voice is my favorite sound)'.

It's eight months since he saw Daisy last, and Coulson has mourned her death, protected her life, missed her fiercely every single day.

This is Coulson's life, he thinks. This is the rhythm of his life with Skye, with Daisy. He had her, and then he lost her, and lost her, and lost her, more times than he's able to count.

He loses her again when the safe line stops being safe. And then she sends a recorded message, something hidden so neatly he almost misses it, and Daisy's voice, soft and open, says,  _I miss you._

_I miss you_ , he hears a hundred times, listens to the way she whispers it, and then,  _I don't know if anyone could know me like you do_.

This is Daisy being more open than he's ever heard before, like she's bridging the distance between them with candid emotion, and Coulson feels closer to her than ever, and more apart than they've ever been.

Every time she sends a recording, he listens to it until it feels like her voice should be fainter from the replaying. So many times she sounds exhausted, careworn, and he wishes he could lift even a little of the weight that sits on her shoulders. Every time he replies, he knows he's giving away more, knows every word is him confessing love in a different way. It doesn't matter. They had years of not saying it; now it feels like he could say it a thousand times in different words every time and it's not going to be enough.

_Tell me a secret_ , Daisy says, and he does, he tells her a secret, and then the twenty eighth amendment is ratified, and he records another message, tells her something that isn't a secret at all.

He doesn't expect her back for weeks, yet, but the saying is almost enough.

 

 

The next day, the next morning, when it's still so early the light is dim and gray, he walks into his office and she's there.

"How-" he says, and then, breaking, " _Daisy_ ," and the way she says his name back,  _Coulson_ , like she's been saving it up for so many months.

"I came home," she tells him, "like you asked." She pauses, pushes back her hair. He recognizes her and he doesn't. She has a long scar down her face and he's never heard the story behind it. He reaches out, touches her face tentatively, and Daisy sighs in a way that's heartbreakingly familiar, the sigh that for eight months has said,  _please, Phil, I miss you_.

"You're here," he whispers, still doesn't believe it, and Daisy nods, presses her face into his hand, kisses his palm.

"I," she starts, pauses again. "There was so much I wanted to tell you," she says, smiles like she's recognising something, and oh, he sees. Daisy has listened to his voice just as much as he's listened to hers. "I wanted," she whispers, clears her throat, "I wanted to say it in person. I love you, Phil Coulson, I've loved you since before I ever left, and I just, I don't want to leave again." The words spill out so quick he wishes, suddenly, it was a recording so he could play it again, listen to the way Daisy's lips shape  _love_ , the way she sighs his name, but Daisy is  _here_ , and suddenly all the tentative space and careful touch between them is too little, too huge of a gulf. He doesn't wait, can't wait any longer, catches her up in his arms and kisses her like a dam breaking. 

"I love you," she says again between kisses, "I love you, I love you, god, Phil, I  _missed_ you so much," and her fingers clutching into him reveal just how much she's missed him. Daisy's clinging to him as if they'll be separated again, as if another eight months will pass before they share space, and Coulson never wants to lose her again.

"I missed  _you_ ," Coulson tells her, "so much."

"I know," Daisy agrees, gets her hands in under his shirt, presses her palms flat against his skin. "I could hear it."

"I missed you," he says again, lets her hear it. "I love you. Have loved you. For such a long time, now."

 

 

They get from his office to his bed somehow, although Coulson doesn't remember how. It's all kisses intent and pushed up against doors, a slow undressing, peeling Daisy out of her drab Secret Warriors command gear, black sweater and black denim and scuffed boots, and discovering her again underneath. She looks even more and less like herself when they're lying curved towards each other in his bed. There are creases at the corners of her eyes now, more scars across one shoulder, but her mouth, the way it falls open, he remembers watching her mouth a hundred times like this.

"It's you," Daisy whispers, traces the line of his jaw. "It's you."

"It's me," he agrees, tilts his head, lets her trail her fingers further down his throat, across his chest and the scar there. It feels like she must have seen this before, must have known him this way, but she hasn't. They haven't. This is new, and unfamiliar, and feels like it's the simple, easy continuation of every intimacy up until now.

"God," Daisy says again, flutters vibration light across his skin for a moment, pulls him in closer. There's need between them, desire that's all banked up from months, years of talking around it, and Coulson's suddenly aware of it again, filled up with it. "I might actually die of repressed lust if we don't have sex soon," Daisy jokes, and that she feels it too makes him kiss her hard. Then she's pulling him up above her, opening to him, her knuckles white with the effort of gripping his hands so tight.

This is _not losing_ Daisy. This is the opposite of losing Daisy. This is everything they've waited for.

"I love you," he says, and she smiles like the sun.

"Tell me again," she asks, and he leans in, brushes kisses to the side of her neck.

"I love you," he breathes, repeats it until he loses his breath and words turn into gasps and moans and desperate noises, and Daisy moving against him, Daisy crying out in a voice that's lost language, it's better than every word she ever sent him.

 

 

"Do the team know I'm alive?" she asks afterwards, drawing circles across the planes of his stomach with her fingertips.

"Yes," Coulson says, winces without meaning to. "They were... upset. Angry. But they understood. Will understand. You know not all of them are still here, right?"

"Fitz is gone," Daisy agrees. "Decided to leave. You told me that via messaging." 

He did, he thinks. Remembers the day. He was so tired, so played out from every angle happening at the same time, he could barely muster emotion as he passed on the news. "He's working on the Iliad," he says. "Couldn't say that via messaging, I guess. And Hunter's in the wind."

"He and Bobbi are off again, huh," Daisy murmurs, lays her head on his chest. He strokes her hair, touches the scar on her cheek.

"You never..." he says, wondering if he should be circumspect, but she just presses her fingers to it, looks thoughtful for a moment.

"Guess I didn't," she says in the end. "There was nothing you could do. And I was safe, anyway. Caught shrapnel in an extraction gone wrong." She's silent for a long stretch, grabs his hand, clings to it tight. "You know I can't stay?" she says, and Coulson thinks  _no, don't go_.

"Don't go," he says, takes a breath. "You have to go. Back."

"I have to go back," she agrees. "I never wanted to leave. I never want to leave. But I have to go back, at least until we're properly clear. I have to bring my people home." It's not  _fair_ , Coulson thinks, that the war should be over and not over all at once like this, that the weight on Daisy's shoulders can only lessen for such a brief moment.

The way things have been has never been fair. Daisy's been dead too many times for anything to ever be fair. He swallows it, breathes her in, kisses her foreheard and her cheeks and her lips.

"You could come with me, this time," she suggests. "Come and see where it is that I missed you from for so long."

"Is there space for me, in your base?" he asks, and Daisy smiles playfully.

"I could bring you on as a consultant," she teases. "Are you ready to see the much weirder world, Phil?"

"I don't know," he says, brings her hand up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles. "Will I have to call you  _Agent Johnson_?"

"Hmmm," Daisy murmurs. "Only when I tell you to," and god,  _god_ , Coulson has missed this.

"I love you," he tells her again, and it's not a secret, just an easy promise between them. Coulson thinks he could have said this years ago, could have said it in so much more than looks and gestures and wistfully silent moments, but the saying, now, it's enough.

**Author's Note:**

> title still from 'drift' by Alina Baraz. it's a really great song okay.
> 
> anyway this is for all the skoulson fandom I hurt by writing the first one. I hope this makes up for it.


End file.
